Platform Engineer

We are seeking an experienced Senior OpenShift Engineer to join our Container Platform Engineering capability to migrate and modernise application workloads onto Red Hat OpenShift in on‐premises data centres. You will help design and run migration waves, uplift cluster foundations, embed automation/GitOps, and ensure platform controls meet enterprise security and operational standards.

Role purpose (what you’ll be accountable for)

You will be a senior technical contributor responsible for engineering, migrating, and operating OpenShift clusters and associated platform services to support application onboarding at scale. You will work closely with infrastructure, network, security, and application teams to deliver secure and repeatable on‐prem migration patterns and run‐state operational excellence.

Key responsibilities (What you’ll do)

A) On‐prem OpenShift migration delivery (core)

• Lead and execute migration waves from legacy platforms (VM‐based or older container platforms) to OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) on‐prem.
• Produce and own migration artefacts: cutover plans, rollback strategies, runbooks, and hypercare.
• Define landing zones for apps: namespaces/projects, quotas, network segmentation, routes/ingress, secrets, config, service accounts, RBAC.
• Establish repeatable app onboarding “golden path” patterns (templates, operators, Helm/Kustomize, pipelines).
• Drive modernisation decisions with app teams (12‐factor readiness, externalised config, health probes, scaling strategies).

B) Platform engineering & operations (build and run)

• Engineer OpenShift clusters for availability, performance, capacity, and resilience; drive cluster scaling and tuning.
• Plan and execute upgrades, patching, and lifecycle management across multi‐cluster estates.
• Operate key platform components: ingress/controllers, internal registry, image policies, storage interfaces (CSI), cluster logging/monitoring.
• Provide advanced L3 troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and post‐incident improvements.

C) Automation, IaC & GitOps

• Build platform automation using Infrastructure as Code and configuration management (e.g., Terraform/Ansible) and promote reusable modules.
• Implement or mature GitOps operating model for cluster and app configuration (e.g., Argo CD/Flux).
• Create and maintain CI/CD enablement patterns (pipeline templates, secure build principles, artifact promotion).

D) Observability, reliability & SRE practices

• Implement and improve monitoring/alerting/logging using enterprise tooling (e.g., Prometheus/Grafana/ELK patterns).
• Define SLO/SLI aligned metrics for platform services and reduce toil through automation.
• Support resilience testing, DR/BCP exercises, and role‐swap/backup recovery where required.

E) Security, governance & compliance (bank‐grade controls)

• Enforce multi‐tenancy controls: RBAC, network policies, pod security standards, admission control, image provenance and vulnerability management.
• Implement secrets management patterns and ensure encryption/integrity controls across cluster services.
• Contribute to platform standards, risk assessments, audit evidence, and regulatory expectations for secure engineering in financial services.

F) Stakeholder management & mentoring

• Work across infra/network/security/app delivery teams to resolve blockers and deliver migration outcomes.
• Mentor engineers and support teams; contribute to knowledge base and operational documentation.

Requirements (What you need to have to succeed in this role)

Essential experience

• 7+ years in platform engineering / DevOps / SRE / infrastructure engineering with strong Linux fundamentals.
• 3–5+ years hands‐on administering and engineering Red Hat OpenShift (OCP 4.x) in enterprise environments.
• Proven delivery of on‐prem migration programmes (VM → containers, legacy → OpenShift, platform consolidation).
• Strong Kubernetes/OpenShift knowledge: scheduling, controllers, operators, networking, storage, security context, RBAC.
• Strong automation skills with Terraform and/or Ansible and Git‐based workflows.
• Solid scripting/programming skills (Python/Bash) for automation and tooling.
• Observability experience using common stacks such as Prometheus/Grafana and ELK.
• Experience working in Agile/DevSecOps environments, delivering end‐to‐end improvements in regulated contexts.

Strong technical capabilities (expected)

• OpenShift cluster install/ops knowledge (IPI/UPI), upgrades, certificate management, node lifecycle, etc.
• Container image lifecycle: registries, signing, scanning, SBOM, build policies, runtime restrictions.
• Networking understanding: ingress/route, DNS, LBs, firewalls, service mesh concepts (where used).
• Storage integration: CSI drivers, RWX/RWO semantics, backup/restore patterns.

Nice to have

• GitOps pipeline implementation experience and related tooling.
• Service mesh familiarity (e.g., Istio) and secrets management solutions (e.g., Vault).
• Experience integrating OpenShift with enterprise IAM, PKI, SIEM, and vulnerability management tooling.
• Exposure to regulated environments and audit evidence preparation.

Qualifications / Certifications (preferred)

• Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Administration (or equivalent).
• RHCE/RHCSA beneficial.
• Kubernetes certification (CKA/CKS) beneficial.